Gaming: Do You Like The Violence?

[Kyuuketsuki]

Interesting article on Wired:

All That Gore Gets in the Way of Gameplay

Barely 15 minutes into the new Wolverine videogame, I am ankle-deep in carnage. I have filleted soldiers straight up the center, like fish; I have spun in a pirouette of death, decapitating anyone and everyone an arms’-breadth away. And I’ve grabbed enemies by the neck, hoisting them aloft and stabbing them repeatedly — crick, crick, crick — right through their rib cages. Eeeyikes.

Does grisly violence like this make action games more fun? For years, I assumed the free market had answered that question with a resounding “yes.” If shoot-’em-up games were insanely gory, it was, I figured, because developers were simply giving their hardcore young-dude audience what it wanted. Violence sells because violence works: It’s crucial to creating a sense of dastardly fun. Right?

Maybe not. In fact, some recent and fascinating scientific work suggests precisely the opposite: In a paper in January’s Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a group of researchers found that violence might be the least compelling part of our favorite videogames. In fact, sometimes it gets in the way of the fun.

[Read More Here]

So what gets you going when you're playing games? I admit I like the action but I think these researchers may have a point.

Kyu

[leo-rcc]

I love the GTA series not because of the violence but the degrees of freedom you have ingame to go and do as you please, and not be hindered by the confines of the game. If you don't want to play a mission, go ahead and do something else. There is plenty of violence in GTA, but I don't feel it is the primary objective of the game and neither should it be. I do like it though, don't get me wrong, I love it when I shoot the head of a guy with a sniper rifle.

[Tiberius]

I like violence in video games, but if it doesn't have a good control system then it becomes terrible. Games like Max Payne (1 & 2) and Oblivion have great control systems, and the violence in them makes them great to play. I think violence comes into it, but I'd probably like a good story over the violence any day.

[lrh9]

I like realism. So if I'm doing something violent in a game, then I want it to be as realistic as possible. (Sometimes this makes games more difficult, because as we all know there is no health bar in real life. You get shot, you're going to be seriously disabled or dead. Just have to reset and try again. Unless you have minions at your disposal or energy shields.)

---

I agree with Adrian too. In Oblivion (and Morrowind, perhaps to a greater extent), I enjoyed scoping for a place to be my base and then systematically going in and fighting the inhabiting monsters and outlaws to the death for the right to have it.

[Edwardo Piet]

Fuck the graphics, go for the gameplay in my opinion, with or without gore.

For me it's simply that graphics itself is a subset of gameplay, as is everything else for the game.

Because if the game looks awesome you enjoy the game more, hence the game 'plays' better - but ultimately it's about how fun the game is to play (at least for me) - I play a game to play it not to look at it. The rest is just bonus to make the game look more fun, seem more fun and play better.

It's like when Gamespot does reviews of games and it like has Graphics, Sound, Difficulty, etc, etc as sections to rate.

And then it has a section called gameplay! I find this quite a amusing TBH although I understand it's simply how games are rated.

ONE section within a review about how good a game is called GAMEPLAY. Isn't it all about how well the game plays? How much you enjoy it?

Cos for me the 'Gameplay' section and score of THAT simply means: Everything fucking else! I mean the graphics and the sound and the difficulty all add to how well the game plays and how enjoyable it is. So gameplay simply means every other fucking factor that adds to the game! Lol.

If a game has excellent gameplay but shit graphics and audio....then it doesn't play as well as if it has awesome sound quality and looks awesome, it's not as fun to play, the gameplay is less good. Because part of the gameplay of a game is the awesome graphics and sound adding to the fun, adding to how the game 'plays' for you; adding to the gameplay. So it's all a subset of gameplay IMO...

Now, if the graphics look good but slow the game down then for me at least that decreases the game play. Because if a game runs more smoothly with perhaps still nice looking and very easy to navigate graphics but rather than completely overpowering graphics, plenty or gore and fog and smoke or whatever that slows the game down or makes it harder to play - I think the game plays better with simply smooth graphics rather than suped-up graphics...what looks good is not the same as what is overpowering and realistic regardless of it it actually makes the game better to play or not.

On the other hand...some people might want to sacrifice some 'playability' for better graphics. If they think the game plays better that way in the sense it's more fun...then IMO from THEIR point of view THAT'S the better Gameplay even if the game runs less smooth cos the better graphics add to the game, hence add to the fun, hence add to the gameplay, etc.

So it's all about the gameplay for me. And I PERSONALLY don't give a shit about gore cos I just like my game to run smoothly and be fun.

Although a bit of gore can look fucking sweet - ultimately to me it's about WHATEVER makes the game play better, more fun - WHATEVER makes the game have better gameplay overall, what makes it better game - that matters. It's the same as my attitude to music - 'so long as it sounds good I don't give a fuck what genre or band it is...although I might on average sway to one particular band or genre more than others simply because that's what I personally LIKE - ultimately it's what sounds good to me'.

Replace ' so as long as it sounds good' with 'so long as it PLAYS well' and replace 'band/genre' with 'game/gamedeveloper' and that's my attitude on games too.

It's nice to have nice looking graphics, but also - nice looking doesn't always mean more technical and/or realistic.

And I think if graphics look awesome but get in your way then that doesn't necessarily look good because despite the fact they technically look good it might be fucking irritating having to see the 'awesome graphics' fuck up the game all the time LOL -so it doesn't 'look good' in that sense because looking at it is fucking annoying cos it's hard to play the game with how the graphics look! They 'get in your way' or are awkward to navigate/play with/on or whatever.

And if the graphics aren't exactly the most realistic graphics ever but they're very easy to navigate and they DON'T get in your way - then that's pretty cool graphics I think - being easy to navigate and not getting in the way of the game I mean. There's graphics that LOOK good but not necessarily BETTER because better looking might not necessarily be for the look itself but be because you don't have to keep looking at it getting in the way of your fucking game and they're not so damn difficult to play with! Lol.

Of course if you have pretty damn good gameplay but the graphics are shit...that's not good because the game would very probably be more fun to play - and hence; have better gameplay - if the graphics looked less shit or even good! (providing they were easy to play with...graphics that look realistic but fuck up the game isn't exactly the best graphics that can be...graphics that look 'ok.' but are really easy to play with and the game itself is awesome; those kind of graphics can be fucking sweet.

Lol.

/end gaming rant.


EvF

[Madscientist]

Violence and gore is not what get me into a game.
I am more of a strategist gamer than an action one.
For sure, in game like the Civilisation serie for exemple, there is implied violence in war, but no gory graphic to go with it, but still make for awesome gaming.

I would rather have a no-gore strategie game that hook my on my computer for several hours at time than a gory action one that is getting quite repetitive after the first few hundreds kill.

I don't even go for heavy graphism, what count is gameplay, and gameplay alone. Hell, i'm still playing game that are 10 or 15 years old, just because the game experience is fucking awesome.
In that regard, best game ever is: ''XCOM: UFO defense'', or i think it is called ''UFO: Ennemy unknow'' in europe.

[Edwardo Piet]

My favourite game ever (that I have also played 3 games of online today actually - despite it's 10 years old now) doesn't have any gore. It too is a strategy game. A RTS.

The game being AoC. Which is one mega abbreviation because the FULL title is (putting it altogether) Age Of Empires 2: The Age of Kings: The Conquerors Expansion pack

An awesome abbreviation for an awesome game

EvF

[leo-rcc]

I don't even go for heavy graphism, what count is gameplay, and gameplay alone. Hell, i'm still playing game that are 10 or 15 years old, just because the game experience is fucking awesome.
In that regard, best game ever is: ''XCOM: UFO defense'', or i think it is called ''UFO: Ennemy unknow'' in europe.

Your not alone in that one, XCOM is one of the very few games MicroProse got right. It was voted as the best PC game of all time by IGN.

[Edwardo Piet]

I've not heard of it.

EvF

[leo-rcc]

I've not heard of it.

EvF

Your loss.